This has got to be first for me, completed a piece (only took 5 yrs), started a new work and finished a drawing all before the 6th Jan 2016!

October 2010 Beaded Journal Page

Above is the finished beaded journal page I started in 2011 and never quite finished.  Here is a link to a previous blog post I had made about this 2010 Beaded Journal project

Part of the reason I have gone back to this project is that I decided I have to embrace this side of my creative side. Before I have dismissed it as just a hobby but I get a real feeling of creativity when I am working with all the arms of my artistic abilities. I am a rank amateur in regards of embroidery,beading, sewing or fabrics. However, somehow that is freeing as I don’t have any rules to conform to that seems to block my path with painting and drawing.

Of course, these days there are no rules to break with art but when I was at college, painting was still painting, ceramics were pots (sorry that was the extent of my knowledge then, thankfully I know better now), textiles, what are  they?  Actually my interest in textiles started at Camberwell which had an excellent forwarding thinking textile course. Until I did my foundation course I had never really thought about textiles but by the time, it came around to applying for a degree course, I was split between doing painting or textiles, I knew I had a guaranteed place on either course at Camberwell, so it was a hard decision.  As I knew nothing about other textile courses and I eager to leave home, I chose painting as that is why I did the foundation course. I must have been mad, leave London for a provincial school but it was the only way I could leave home and study, LOL.

I don’t regret not doing a degree in textiles but I do wish I had known about the Embroiders’ Guilds courses when I lived in the UK. Now I just have to content myself with their excellent magazine Embroidery.  I am amazed by the quality of work that is produced and it has genuinely inspired my move back to working with beads, fabric and embroidery.

November 2010 Beaded Journal project

So I decided as way back into this frame of mind, I would complete the remaining 3 pages of the 2010 Beaded Journal Project. Above is the current page I am working on. I had already started the felting on this piece , so it was easy to pick it up and restart. I began by felting a little bit more and now I am on the embroidery stage. It still has a way to go before it is complete.

However, unlike my previous forages into this medium, I will not be working exclusively within it. During the months in France  I took loads of photographs randomly as I travelled around where my parents lived.  Already I was thinking along the lines of incorporating all the various elements together. The fun and daunting aspect was and is, I have no idea how I am going to do it. I have various ideas of how to do it but it will be a trial and error journey.

Above is a oil pastel painting I did yesterday, based on the same image as the beaded journal I am currently doing.  I rediscovered oil pastels over during the time I was doing the advent project. When I was a student, along with Carah d’ache Neocolors II, oil pastels were my favourite medium.  Being a student, I could only afford the craft shop oil pastels which were readily available in most shops with art materials which were the Guitar oil pastel brand. Looking them up just now and it seems there is quite a trade in vintage pastels of this brand. I still have a few of my old pastels left but they are well used and quite hard compared with the brand I am using at the moment, Sennelier which are very rich and creamy.

So 2016 is going well so far.  Don’t forget to keep track of my work on instagram  Jacqui Boyd Alden where I posting on an almost daily basis and my Facebook page